


Push

by saint sentiment (cmm6016)



Category: Silent Hill
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Explicit Language, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Physical Abuse, Promiscuity, Silent Hill 2, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-16
Updated: 2013-06-16
Packaged: 2017-12-15 03:28:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/844768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cmm6016/pseuds/saint%20sentiment
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post Leave Ending. Don't just stand there; say nice things to me. Cause I've been cheated, I've been wronged. James/Laura.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Push

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Domestic violence, alcoholism, promiscuity, a whole lot of language and asshole!James. It’s not pretty.
> 
> The theme for this lengthy fic is the song "Push" by Matchbox 20, which I still can't stop listening to. It drove this fic to painful completion and it's still driving my feels around in a swerving car.

**1.**

 

It’s an apartment. It’s not even a very nice apartment, but it’s better than the place they’ve come from.

Two bedrooms, a kitchen and a bathroom. The living room is the most spacious room in the house. It’s an inflated 850 plus utilities. James’ painstaking search for employment after a devastating layoff has finally bore fruit, and while it’s great not to have to depend on unemployment anymore or bite his nails over phone calls from prospective jobs, he’ll be cutting it pretty close with the bills every month. Hell, he’s almost positive he won’t be able to afford this place for long.

He’s never taken care of a kid before, but he’s sure they’re expensive too.

So, it’s an apartment. Not a good one. Not a horrible one, either, for what it’s worth. Could be better. Should certainly be cheaper, but he’s not on the kind of terms with the landlord to sanction a plea to lower the rent.

The scrape of boxes against the floor validates the reality of moving. James feels the floor underneath his feet and this is the worst feeling. Being born all over again. New town, new people, away from everything he knew. This isn’t a happy idea.

He’ll give it a year, at most. He can’t stay in one place for too long.

James works at a packaging plant. The work is seasonal and the hours are volatile, but it’s better than nothing. They’re at the point that just 15 dollars would help them out tremendously. It’d be enough to last them both two days of McDonald’s for dinner. James and Laura have already went a day or two without eating before. While James has always been the quiet, long suffering type, never much inclined to argue or complain, Laura’s 8 years old and going for a whole day without breakfast, lunch, or dinner doesn’t go down well with her. She’ll cry. And then he’ll feel like an ass. A helpless ass that can’t even feed a little girl. That’s when he gets desperate.

James isn’t good at hiding things. He’s quiet, but that doesn’t mean you won’t be able to notice if he’s distressed about something. He just fumes, ruminates, agonizes, or obsesses over things quietly. Good things don’t happen when James fumes, ruminates, agonizes, or obsesses over things. Often the only thing that reaches out to him is the bottle. Perhaps it’s even more dangerous to believe that the bottle is the only one that gives a shit.

He’s already teetering on the edge of an abyss to begin with. It’s just a question of how long it’ll take him to fall in. He’ll ignore it for as long as he can, try to ride it out before he starts teetering. God, he hopes it isn’t anytime soon.

For now, it’s an apartment. It’s what they have. And it’s where they belong.

 

 

The silverware clinks awkwardly between them at dinner some nights later.

James wonders if Laura ever considers running away again or betraying his trust in some way. She couldliterally go right down the street while he’s at work, knock on a neighbor’s door and say, “The man I’m living with kidnapped me,” and he’ll be arrested.

Perhaps if she were evil she’d try it. But being a ward of the state is a worser fate than having to hang around a boring guy like him, right? James isn’t Mary but he’s better than the alternatives, and he thinks Laura’s come to terms with that.

She’s the reason he stepped away from his car and followed her into that fog filled graveyard. To think of it: an 8 year old girl, a hero. A girl who goaded the jumper away from the ledge. An orphan’s earnest desire is to be the center of something, isn’t it? To accomplish something important despite being denied the gifts most children take for granted. Not like at the orphanage, where she was small, inconsequential. Maybe he can help her realize that.

He just hopes he isn’t inconvenient. He hopes his presence is entirely wanted, because if she hadn’t been there, egging him away from his car and from the water, he wouldn’t be here and she’d be back with “Miss Millard and the mean kids.” Those are scary things to consider for them both.

His eyes are downcast. He never knows what to do in moments not punctuated by the scrape and clink of silverware or the drone of the TV. Similarly, she spends their days together in relative silence, except when she wants something: help with homework, a bowl of afternoon cereal, a boredom drive-around, a bed time story, to play games he’s more than 20 years too old for. James gives it all. He couldn’t deny her if he tried. Right now she’s all that he’s got going for him.

James has found that fatherhood is one of those things that trigger an altruistic awakening even the most selfish of persons never anticipate. Some of them step up to the plate and willfully accept that the world has tilted in favor of cultivating this new life they’ve created; others, not so much. Sometimes, the door slams and a mother is left alone. But that isn’t the person he’s set out to be. In this case, the later would never be an option. He needs something to take care of about as much as she wants to be taken care of. He guesses it works out nicely. They feed on each other, need each other, and neither of them are in the position to leave. Sounds like two strangers trapped in a locked room with little choice but to get along, but thankfully they are strangers who’ve handled each other well so far.

He tries not dwell on anything else on top of his third glass of wine.

_Just please God, not now. Not right now_ , James thinks as he rubs his head. He feels it pull at him, and he wants it so. He wants it so much.

_Aren_ _’t I doing well?_

 

 

He doesn’t mean to. He doesn’t meant to, but he does.

Downtown, there’s a titty bar called The Blue Joy. There’s this girl—she has auburn hair down to her mid-back, tousled and messy, the blackest eyeliner and some of the greatest legs he’s ever seen on a girl. She’s 22, and her name is Bianca.

She drives a shitty green Cadillac and he always sees her walking to work with dark blue stilettos. In the nighttime, they look black. But in the starry stage lights that beam down from the ceiling, he sees they’re blue. She presses a heel down on the ground and pins his 20 underneath, all with one hand on the pole and her other leg wrapped around it. Her hair is all over her face like a messy mop, and the sweat on her sternum glitters. Her nipples are pert, showing through her bikini top. There’s a skull and crossbones on one of the triangles of her top and solid black on the other. She went for a pirate theme tonight.

_I want you so bad, it_ _’s driving me mad, it’s driving me mad,_ says the song.

He leans back, hands on his thighs, and watches as she strides toward him.

_She_ _’s so—_

By the time he works up the nerve to remember there’s a kid at home waiting to be fed he’s smashed to shit and everything’s spinning and there’s a whirring in his head. For some reason he’s thinking of a merry-go-round, spinning and gaining color, then the merry-go-round morphs into a spinning top and then a dreidel that finally topples over and something full of glitter bursts and showers down on the night sky.

A pain explodes in the back of his head. He falls down. Someone or something’s got him. He turns around and sees a man in a t-shirt with the name of the titty bar on it saying something about not being in a mood or not being in the mood and I better not see your face back here again, though he doesn’t know what he’s done and suddenly feels really sorry that he doesn’t know. He tries to slur to that effect but the fat man just kicks him again and tells him to get out of here before he loses it.

He carries these words with him as he brings himself to his knees, wondering if perhaps he’s lost something or is in the process of losing something—his keys, his wallet, himself. Feels another shove, but doesn’t think anything of it. The man is as good as forgiven. He’s too shitfaced to be angry, really. There couldn’t be anything wrong with the world at this point, except his legs aren’t working as good as they should be. But even that’s a little funny. He forgives his legs too.

_She_ _’s so—_

He doesn’t know how he got into his car, just that he’s here and now he has a table in his head spinning incessantly like he might have stared at it for a long while in the club and now it’s seared into memory. Lots of colors, and flushed, freckled skin, red from misuse. Wondering where that came from.

_Heavyyyyy_ _…._

 

James fumbles with the latch for an eternity. His head is beginning to throb. The light in the hallway is too damn bright. Why would they let a light that bright shine in the hallway? It’s terrible, violating, searing. Finally he gets the door open and it hits the inner wall of the hallway with a thud. He wavers through the semidarkness, focusing on the light that leads into the living room.

Laura looks so confused right now. She turns her head and her blond ponytail whips to the side. She shuffles to her knees and screws her eyes at James, wary to approach him. It strikes him that there’s no TV in here, just boxes, and Laura has been sitting in the middle of the rug, surrounded by these boxes, for God knows how long. He must have been gone for hours, but he can’t remember when he left. He was supposed to be packing, but then he wanted a pack of cigarettes and…

James burps under his breath and stumbles back a bit, rubbing his head. No, this isn’t right. This is not right, not right, not right.

How…?

“James!” Laura stands, her little fists clenched. Her jaw is working like only a child’s could, unsure and searching for voice, but wondering what to say. She’s probably never yelled like this at an adult before. “What happened to you? Why are you all…?” her eyes take on a look of imploring worry, and she frowns, her mouth opening and closing.

James burps, louder this time, and wipes his mouth. “Oh, sorry…” his lips curl into a smile and he shakes his head, palming his forehead. “I just… God, I dunno. I dunno what happened.”

James doesn’t know and from the looks of it Laura doesn’t want to know either. She just wants to forget this whole thing.

He exhales a long stream of strong smelling breath and blinks for a few moments. This light is too damn bright. He switches it off and pops off his shoes, letting them plop to the floor. Clumsily, James lays blankets out on the floor and collapses onto them, falling into the unfeeling abyss waiting for him behind his eyes. So good not to think anymore…

Laura curls up in a ball and wonders why James came home so late. More importantly, she wonders what this means for her childhood and the coming years she is to spend with him.

 

 

Laura forgives him for all those times and may well keep forgiving him, because she’s still here every morning. She always wakes up before him. Through his bleary, heavy eyes he sees her ponytail bob as she nods to her bickering Barbies, who are presenting their case to the Teddy Bear judge. One of them is the staple Barbie. Long blond hair down past her hips. The blond doll wears a fur-lined Christmas dress taken from the Happy Holidays Limited Edition Barbie Laura was given by the Salvation Army. The other is a brunette with shorter, mousy brown hair, a pink skirt. Maria’s skirt.

Laura doesn’t know that Maria is in bed too. She’s never seen this ghost, but Laura, the sweet, unassuming princess, readily acknowledges and even welcomes the presence of this apparition. Poor thing; she doesn’t understand what a nutcase he is. Resentment will follow in her later years—maybe even disgust. Maria doesn’t come around that often nowadays, but Laura would be better off not knowing anything about her.

“Wakey, wakey, eggs and bakey,” Laura sings, turning to him with her usual bright countenance. Only until he took her home did he finally get her to stop being such a brat to him. She can’t be more of a doll. She adores him now. _Daddy_ , she sometimes says.

_Daddy._

He thinks of Angela. Daddy was a demon. Daddy was a rapist. An eater of dreams and the crusher of hopes.

James might become him too. The Daddy that Laura will find out, too late, that she doesn’t want.

Maria can never be Mommy, and James is just crazy.

She’ll leave some day. He knows it.

 

 

“Laura?” He flicks on the light. She sits up in her bed, her blond, cropped hair disheveled from sleep.

“What's wrong? Are you okay?”

Laura shakes her head.

James carefully inspects the wound. High on Laura's pale, skinny forearm is a gash. He considers a cat, but then, the gash is too deep for a cat. It looks more like a large dog's, or even a bear, but of course that’s completely out of the realm of rationality. He peels back the covers and finds the culprit: a loose bed spring, sharp and stained at the tip with her blood.

“Does it hurt real bad?” he lifts her up into his arms and she latches onto him, sighing into his chest. His heart skips a beat. While she’s usually headstrong and willful, she can be affectionate sometimes.

“I'll have to wrap that up good and tight to stop the bleeding, but first I have to disinfect it, which might hurt a little, okay?”

“Okay.”

James secretly loves the warmth of Laura’s small body, the feeling that he provides protection. Though he can remember plenty of times he was denied warmth, agonies from which no one provided protection.

“Dad..”

“Yeah?” he opens the cabinet door, trying to steady Laura with the support of only one arm while taking out some alcohol and disinfectant from the medicine cabinet. He bumps the door closed with his elbow and sits Laura on the toilet seat.

“You never told me how Mary died.”

James shoots her a look.

“...Laura?”

Laura's old impertinence surfaces, and she lashes, “How did you kill her? Why won’t you tell me? Aren’t I old enough?”

 James straightens. “Why would you ever ask something like that?”

“Because I wanna know.” she presses. Her mouth is set in a hard pout.

“Laura, this isn’t up for discussion.”

“Why not?” she whines. “You don’t want to talk about her because you want to forget all about her. You don’t care about her anymore.”

James breathes through his nose. “Go to bed, Laura.”

Laura glares and petulantly thrusts her arm outward. “Aren’t you gonna clean it up?”

James stares down at Laura sitting on the toilet seat. He wants to tell her the truth. That it was never meant to be this way. He never wanted it to be like this. But he can’t find it in himself to say it and instead presses a cottonball soaked in peroxide to her cut and slaps a band-aid on it, carrying her back to her room. Even though she turns away from him, he still tucks her in and kisses her temple.

No, he never wanted this. If it were up to him rather than that sickness, he’d have Mary here too. If only Laura believed that.

A little while later and it’s 3 in the morning. Laura’s fast asleep. The whole house is dim and quiet. He’s sitting at the living room table with a bottle of shitty bourbon that sears its way down his throat. After a few gulps he doesn’t remember how things ought to be and more comfortingly, he doesn’t care.

 

**2.**

 

Laura grows. It isn’t easy. James always knew she’d grow to be tall, so some nights she cries, holding her knees and praying for the pain to go away. He rubs her back and shoulders until she gets too old for it.

At 10, she’s mostly outside, playing with the other kids. She likes hopscotch, kickball, and hanging from the monkey bars. It’s always been a quiet neighborhood filled with discreet neighbors and nice kids, and he appreciates how boring and tame it is. He can do boring and routine. He slips into it easily.

Things are peaceable for a while.

One morning a constable comes knocking, saying _Mr. Sunderland, open the door_ , and he puts his finger to his lips and shakes his head at Laura, who’s holding a Barbie to her chest and glimpsing from the window to him, wondering what the plan of action is. When the constable decides they’re not home, he eventually goes away, but James knows he’s only going to be back with more guys and a cruiser to shove him in with his hands behind his back.

James holds Laura’s hand as they tiptoe throughout the house, snatching anything they can carry and then sneaking out through the basement.

Such a shame, James thinks as they put the place in their rear-view mirror. Laura really liked it there.

 

 

He can’t really pinpoint where it all began, but things change at some point, and all too easily.

He’s worked his way around temper tantrums, the cold shoulder, crying fits, and even the stupid pranks she loved to swear was all in good fun and didn’t know it would turn all his shirts pink or flood the backyard. What he doesn’t suspect is her sprouting up like a tree at 13 and garnering the attention of so many boys. At first he was terrified. Now he’s just ready to load the shotgun if he finds out so much as one boy is planning to meet up with her somewhere and he wasn’t told about it well in advance.

She’s yelled that she hates him and she’s gonna run away and all that many a time. James just shakes his fatherly head and grounds her. And this works…for a couple of years, at least.

Until high school. Until she’s 16. Until the day he feared finally comes and his power wanes. A shit storm he never anticipated reaches his shore, and the weapon is an unlikely foe, but a formidable one.

Laura makes friends. Which is nice, he supposes. A girl should have lots of friends, shouldn’t she? The only thing that has him a bit disconcerted is the kinds of girls she brings home. One girl, Mona, is what they called in his day “boy-crazy”, but she’s not the same kind of boy-crazy they had in the 60’s. Mona talks about a lot of boys in ways that only their future wives should know them, and she isn’t one to withhold any detail. James doesn’t even mean to press his ear against the door until he hears the word ‘g-strap’. That’s… not what girls talked about when he was growing up. At least, not to his knowledge. Maybe he’s a bit too conservative for the times, but… will Laura really be okay having sleepovers with girls like these?

 

 

It’s Saturday night. She was supposed to be back by 9 but now it’s 11:20 and James is pacing and praying for his phone to ring. He’d called three times and left a message each time, threatening to get the cops involved if she insisted on ignoring him (she’s been doing that of late). He rubs his forehead, squinting his eyes closed, not wanting to, not wanting to, but he has to. He can’t do this.

He doesn’t meant to. He doesn’t mean it. He didn’t want it to come to this, but it’s getting to be too much. He doesn’t want to feel this right now. He doesn’t want this anymore.

James walks into the kitchen and flings open the cabinet under the sink where Laura never looks. She tried to take them away from him, finding all his hiding spots and draining them in the sink. He knows it isn’t good, but it’s just for this time. He just needs it to be mellow, to feel okay. Just a little, and he’ll be fine. Just to take the edge off. He won’t go overboard.

Finally, at 12:45, Laura returns, sour faced and with her arms crossed over her chest. She doesn’t smell like a girl should smell. She smells like she’s been somewhere she shouldn’t have been.

“Is that cologne?” James asks.

“Why are you so _obsessed_ with me?” she says with a cruel inflection, “You called, like, a _million_ times.”

“Because I didn’t know where the fuck you were,” he shouts. James crowds her against the wall. “Where were you? Were you out there with Mona and all her boyfriends?”

Laura looks frightened for a moment and then at the mention of Mona she scoffs and laughs harshly. “Mona has a boyfriend. She’s not going around sleeping with all these guys. Where the hell’d you get that idea?”

“Don’t cuss at me, young lady,” James raises his voice again. “And for your information, that’s not what I heard.”

Something strikes Laura then, a realization that her privacy was breached. “You—were you listening in on us or something? Like an old _pervert_?” Laura lurches forward, fists clenched, catching James off guard and forcing him to step back so she won’t crash into his chest. “You listened in on Mona and me. You _sicko_! You sick—”

James grabs her forearm and yanks her to him. “You little bitch,” he spits. “I gave you everything. Didn’t I give you everything?”

She squirms but his grip is too tight. “Quit it,” she cries.

“You’re a bad girl.” James breathes on her, and suddenly Laura understands. “And bad girls only go down one road.”

Laura is dragged to her room and shoved in, startled by the loud slam of the door behind her. James pants on the other side. She can practically feel the heat of his exhales through it. “From now on the only places you’ll be hanging out is at school and in your room. Tell all your little sluts they’re not your friends anymore.”

James stalks away, leaving Laura to wonder just where the hell that came from.

 

 

At this age, Laura’s all about her girlfriends. She never wants to be at home. James gets used to the loneliness. He knows it pretty well and Laura should be out there living her life. It’s not something he can help. All he can really do is stand back and let her have fun and try not to think about how his life is already over. But when he’s alone he doesn’t like the things he does. Or the places he goes to.

Laura can get snippy with him from time to time, but he lets it all roll off. That only makes her complain and say he’s more boring and needs to get a hobby or get some friends.

Then another change happens, and James doesn’t go a single day without a shot or a swig of something. At first he tells her it’s nerves. She tells him he’s ‘self-medicating’ but he brushes it off as a stupid term she learned from TV and tells her to eat her dinner.

“Do you have to have wine with everything?” Laura asks.

“Don’t make that face. It makes you look ugly,” James swirls the pasta around his fork like a spool, his eyes downcast.

“Why don’t you ever date anyone?”

James drops his fork onto his plate and meets her with hard eyes. “What kind of questions are these? Doesn’t sound like a nice dinner conversation to me.”

“Cos it isn’t,” she carelessly frowns and picks at her food again.

 

 

The curfew only lasts for a day or two, after which James briefly apologizes for his “exaggerated” reaction to the situation and admits maybe he should relax. “I’m just glad you’re okay,” he rubs her arms, which she hates. “You can’t worry me like that.”

The soft eyes, the sentimentality, the agreeableness. Laura hates all of it.

She’s heard this all before. He says things like this every time. Laura shrugs him off and closes the door on him, languishing on her bed and popping in her headphones to drown out the burning in her chest and throat.

_What_ _’s the point of dumping it?_ She thinks. _The bastard only buys more._

There are other times, too. They just keep piling up. James gets smashed, does something stupid, says he’s sorry the next day. He’s grounded her, sent her to her room, called her a bitch, slut, whore, cunt and anything else that might have applied to her in his whiskey addled brain at the time. Made her cry. It’s sickening even to him but she’s so damn beautiful when she cries and maybe that’s why he does it. He’s heard girls say that guys like to make them cry because they get a kick out of it. Perhaps it’s true. Some men make a girl cry because they think it’s funny to see their eyes get puffy and watch hyperventilate and try to speak at the same time. He sees that, yet it shouldn’t make sense. Laura’s beautiful when she cries but he doesn’t grasp how that can be. He’s supposed to be a father, thoroughly opposed to making any woman cry, much less his own daughter. But there’s something exquisite about her pain. Why is that? He guesses he’s always had it out for everyone after Mary took ill, after that town, after everything, but is it so simple? Mostly he just wants to numb the pain, but witnessing pain is okay too. He likes it.

And when Laura cries… he can’t help it. He smiles.

 

 

It’s after the party that James decides that Laura reaching high school age is about the worst damn thing that’s ever happened to him.

Her eyeliner streaks down her face, her cheeks are puffy as he drags her in by her elbow. She wrestles free of him and stomps to her room,  slamming the door as hard as she can. James walks up to it and says, “Keep it up,” but the fight is pretty much over, and so is her night. It’s only an empty threat. The wall that separates them is only a temporary solution.

This time, it wasn’t all girls. There were guys there. One of them had his hand up her shirt. And she looked like she was liking it too.

As if dealing with her after hours shenanigans wasn’t enough, he already checked all of his places. Under the sink, in the basement cupboard, in his own room. The bottles are gone. James’ teeth grit.

Laura’s bedroom door slams open. Laura gets up from wiping her reddened face. “What the hell are you doing?” she croaks, her voice still stifled with tearful frustration.

“Where is it,” he says. And it’s not a question. He wants her to say it.

“Where’s _what_ ,” she says through her teeth.

James’ gives her a side look and clenches his fists. Laura’s meeting the challenge, head held up, blotchy face on proud display.

“You know… exactly… what I’m talking about.”

“I dumped it,” she smiles. It’s a shoddy, broken one, but Laura doesn’t care. It’s hardened by a humorous acceptance. “That what you wanted to hear?”

His hand crashes against her cheek and she reels, staggering back a bit before stilling again. She holds a hand to her face and focuses on breathing, fighting an onset of emotion. She doesn’t want to give him that. Not tonight. Or any other night hereafter.

 

 

The car’s doing 60 and his fingers are itching but he wants just the peace of the open road. After last night, after Laura, he just needs a drive.

His phone rings. Once. Twice. He wants to ignore it, but something presses him to answer. It’d be just his shitty luck that another constable came while he’s out, looking for him. His neighbor Randy, another ex-con familiar with police procedure, says he’ll look out for him. You never know. Or, it could just be the little bitch calling to say the school had an early dismissal and she wants to be picked up. James sighs and flips the little shit open. “Yeah,” he grouses.

“Hello, is this James Sunderland? You were listed on Laura’s emergency contact list.”

“Yeah, I’m her father,” James straightens out the wheel, but his blood is already boiling. She got detention. Or she’s been suspended. No, no, wait. Don’t tell him. She’s been skipping. That’s what he’s preparing himself for.

“Is Mrs. Sunderland there? I’d like to speak with her,” the woman on the other line says.

“Just me,” James drawls, losing his patience already. “What’s wrong? What she do now?”

The woman’s breath hitches, and she lets out a sigh. “Mr. Sunderland, I don’t know the situation at home, but Laura is in desperate need of guidance. Are you aware that she is failing almost every class? She has been skipping classes and causing trouble amongst her peers.”

James licks at his teeth, his eyes narrowed. “Uh huh.”

The woman pauses. He can imagine her face on the other line, and his tone probably gives her all the information she needs on that point, but miraculously, he doesn’t care.

“Mr. Sunderland,” she states, gravely, “Laura was caught in an illicit position on _school_ grounds.”

 

 

The front door closes. From the kitchen he hears the soft padding of her feet, the dropping of her book bag on the couch. She’s probably looking around to see where he is, wondering if he really isn’t here. Little thumps approach the living room, then still. He knows she’s looking for him and he wants her to find him. Laura appears in the door frame of the kitchen, squinting her eyes at the darkness. She can make out James’ figure against the oval shadow of the table, see his silhouette and his folded hands.

She scoffs. “You’re drunk again, aren’t you.”

The shadow doesn’t respond, hardly moves. Laura tires of the game he’s playing already. She walks briskly up to him and pulls out a chair, plopping hard down on it and swinging her legs over the top to rest near the emptied shot glass and ash tray.

“Just what the hell do you think you’re doing.” James says low.

“Oh, I’m sorry. No feet on the table?” she cants her head.

“I wish I could be madder at your feet on the table… rather than what you really did.”

Laura freezes. Her mouth closes and opens again, but not a word is uttered. She folds her arms over herself. After a tense pause, she plays it off, flicking a stray wisp of hair to the side. Her trademark defiance. “What’s the word around the block, muchacho?”

“The word around the block.” James shakes his head and laughs. He should probably rub at his eyes rather than entertain the urge to wrap his hands around her neck, which is what he’d rather do. “Listen.” He slams his fist on the table. “I’m on the road today driving around and I get a call from some bitch from the principle’s office saying you were fucking some kid on school grounds! Sound familiar?”

Laura looks away. Her jaw tightens. Even in the dim light he can see her tense up. Her shoulders bunch up at the sharpness of his voice and her fingers press into her upper arms, cuffing them to her chest. James gets up and flicks the kitchen light on. Laura snaps her eyes shut for a moment and blinks them open, adjusting to the sudden brightness. His expression is stern and his hard eyes bore into her.

“Look at me,” he demands.

Laura blinks some more, and her lips wriggle. It suddenly hits him that she might cry and the only reason he’s actually feeling horrible about it is because he’s sober. Had she come home fifteen to twenty minutes later he might actually have had a buzz going on, and this might all be funny.

“I did.” she says.

“Did what.” he sits back down, his voice a string stretched to snap.

“I did it, okay? I sucked his dick.”

 

 

The three days that follow Laura’s suspension is quiet and strained. Nothing punctuates the subdued domesticity but the sounds of the TV and its occasionally flicking channels, or the groan of the faucet or the spurt of the shower head. At first the silence had hurt him but then, he hasn’t really been all that close to Laura to feel the sting of her indifference. After she turned 12 he became old news and she was off, obsessing about boy bands, actors, romantic comedies and most recently that whole Facebook thing that James refuses to understand. He left her to those things as he sat around and drank the years away, and sometimes he wonders if he should even be angry that things are this way between them. She’s only got a few more years with him before she’ll be out on her own. Maybe it’s just too late.

James heaves a gusty sigh and hangs his head low over the sink. He feels it’s probably gonna come back up sometime soon, just like everything else he tries to run from. The drinking, the outbursts, the distance… it scarred them both irreparably. They need to establish some common ground, he decides. They need a fresh start. A second try.

 

 

Laura’s lips are pursed and her arms crossed over her breasts, making them bunch up. The tank top she’s wearing is so thin he can even see the lines of her bra. And the bra itself isn’t doing much either because her nipples aren’t exactly hard to discern through her shirt.

They’re at the table again, per his request. He’s trying something new with Laura and he doesn’t have any real confidence that it’ll work, just that he should try and maybe, _maybe_ it could change something. So here goes.

“I know you don’t have any respect for me.” James starts. “You made that perfectly clear.”

Laura almost looks bored. But it’s all a front. Point in fact, he knows she’s just beginning to struggle with how uncomfortable this is. He can see the silent wrestling in her features. She’s never seen him this agreeable or this nice since she was, well, a lot younger. That makes his stomach twist a bit. He feels like a fool. His determination almost falters and he considers the thought of just cutting this short and telling her he’ll get her, oh, he doesn’t know, a pair of _shoes_ or something if she’ll just stay out of trouble. He’ll take her out to the mall or take her to the movies. She probably already does that with her friends, so he’d be poor company in those cases, but it’s a thought.

“I just thought maybe we can start over.”

Her lips curl into a smile. The other defense is rising. The sarcastic bitch mode.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” she presses, squinting her eyes at him as if he’s some sort of insect she’s got a mind to swat into a squish of tiny bug guts. “There’s no mending this. I fucking despise you, James.”

“Laura,” he warns, already realizing how fast this is going downhill and tempering his angrier inclinations. “Language.”

“You never stopped me before. You could give a shit.”

“Yeah, well, now I fucking do, so stop it.” he spits.

What an example he’s setting, she must think.

She shakes her head as she slouches back in her chair. “You just don’t get it.”

“You’re right, I don’t. I don’t get a lot of things,” his voice drops, wavering between calm and desperate again. “But I tried, Laura.”

“Tried what!” she stands from her seat and the chair topples over. “You know what you were doing to me!”

James turns aside, his teeth gritting. “Laura—”

“Stop,” she holds her arms out, as if impeding some invisible force on both sides. “Just stop it, alright? How can you pretend you don’t know? All those times you just—just got fucking hammered and you _hit_ me—”

“You shouldn’t touch what doesn’t belong to you.”

“And you threatened me. You said all those things. That you’d break my arm if I touched your stuff again. But I was trying to make you _stop_.”

“I’m the adult here, Laura.” His voice is shuddering, his fists clenching on his thighs, digging into the denim.

“Fuck you.” She backs away, shaking her head. “I hate you. Leave me alone.” She turns around and runs into her room, slamming the door.

James doesn’t even measure the time it takes to get from the kitchen to her bedroom before his hands, of their own furious accord, are jiggling the knob and he’s shouting for her to come out. Laura’s voice is a muffle he can’t even hear because his temples feel like they’re pressing against his skull.

He wants to hurt her.

He wants to hurt her because it’s all true. It’s all true and he’s tired of being the bad guy and Laura should feel pain too because she doesn’t understand what he’s going through. She knows _nothing_.

James stomps back to the kitchen, throwing a shelf open and snatching a knife. He goes back to Laura’s room, jimmies the lock, and barrels though. Laura backs up against the wall, yelling something about the cops and calling him a psycho, and flashing images of him in all of those titty bars rush back to him, the way he grabbed at the legs of the dancers, the way he held the girl in his arms and wouldn’t let go even as she cried and threatened him with security.

She’s just like all of those girls. But she’s special. She was the first.

He drops the knife and lunges at her.

At the end she is crumpled up against the floor, holding her stomach. Her hair shrouds her face. She clenches at her abdomen, panting. Her spine is bent and sticking out and he’s reeling because it happened so fast. He slumps down on Laura’s bed, feeling the smooth comforter up against his palms.

He stares at the wall, through the wall, and says nothing.

 

 

“Why did you have sex with that boy?” he asks.

“Because I’m a cunt. That’s what cunts do. They get fucked.”

“Why are you acting like this?” he says absently, because he’s just about given up. Laura is smiling, smiling through her bruises. She refuses to rub them, to use the antiseptic and dab at her head. She wears it proudly. As proudly as she can wear nothing and stroke a kid’s cock in her hands. He knows even that terrible bit because she told him. Even through the pain it’s funny to think about. It’s just one big fucking joke. He only wants to start laughing with her. Instead he asks again, “Why are you doing this?”

In mockery, she folds her hands on the table, as he does. She pushes herself in, and takes a good look at James, even though he’s looking away, studying the cabinets rather than her because the thought of Laura and the word cock simultaneously disgusts him and invites him to think about it some more like the fucking pervert he is. The expression that accompanies it is not one he wants her to read.

Laura’s eyes bore into him, unwaveringly. Issuing a challenge.

“Because I want to. You pushed me. And now I’m gonna push you.”

 

 

**3.**

 

Laura comes home to see her room scraped clean of all her belongings and piled in duffel bags in the living room. Her heart skips a beat before she rushes into James’ room to see him packing too.

“What the hell is this?” she cries.

His back is turned to her. For a few moments all he does is rummage through his things, pulls out a long t-shirt and tosses it into a trash bag.

“Well?”

James rests on his haunches and looks around the room, assessing. “We’re moving, Laura. Even you can see that,” he says levelly.

“Why? _Where_?” she presses.

He stands and dusts off his pants.

“Brahms.”

 

 

Laura hates the drive there, she hates the unpacking, she hates the Chinese they order for dinner that night, and she even hates the name of the new school and the fact that she has to spend her senior year getting used to new people and making new friends. She’s been questioning him all day on varying subjects including his sanity and what he hopes to accomplish by moving out of Ashfield, to which he replies, “You were a cocksucker in Ashfield. And I was, as you put it, an old pervert. We’re starting over here.”

After Laura stomps off, he adds, to no one in particular, “I’m James Sunderland. And this is my daughter, Laura Sunderland.”

He hopes the ghosts they left behind won’t follow them here, but he isn’t holding out for it.

 

 

The day starts like any other. The morning comes with the chirping of birds and the too bright rays of light slicing through the shutters and stinging his eyelids, forcing him awake. He doesn’t see the signs until the the coffee’s brewing.

She isn’t downstairs, lounging in the kitchen, her weary eyes staring into a bowl and her cheeks pouched with cereal, her book bag slouched against the foot of the stool she’d be sitting on. He thinks she’s slept in, so he goes upstairs and lo and behold, she isn’t there.

James doesn’t officially begin to wonder until he sees she’s not in the bathroom, his bedroom, out in the backyard, or even walking to school. They’re only two blocks from the high school. He’d catch her walking there from the porch. He grumbles. She could have woken up earlier than him and went to a friend’s house for breakfast. Except that theory doesn’t hold up when it’s 6 in the morning - far too early to leave. And Laura always tells him where she’s going - be it via text, note, _something_. He’s slapped the shit out of her too many times for her to forget.

He rubs his temples and his legs feel like running somewhere, but he doesn’t know where she’d go off to, so there’s nowhere to get to.

Then the panic sets in. Blood sears through his veins and his heart feels like it’s doing this balancing act on a thin rope, teetering on the edge of falling and shattering on the ground, much to the horror or amusement of all the spectators.

She’s gone. She’s gone. She’s gone.

James heart jumps in immediate action and he makes for the bed, where his cellphone is, somewhere. He tosses the covers around, patting the surface and feeling under pillows.

_Oh my God, oh my God—_

He growls and gets on his hands and knees, crawling around on the floor for the fucking thing. Where the hell is it? He presses his head to the carpet and squints his eyes at the narrow space underneath his bed. Dust bunnies, a stray coin or two and a bedroom slipper gone rogue. Shit.

It occurs to him that he might have put it on the kitchen counter and he runs to the kitchen, scanning the countertop, seeing nothing resembling his cell phone. Now he’s about 2 seconds from popping a blood vessel—until he gets the bright idea to check the pockets of his own robe and feels the cool surface of his phone. James closes his eyes and grits his teeth. He could punch himself in the face for that.

He flips his phone open and dials Laura’s number. It rings and rings. When he’s sure that she’s not going to pick up, he palms his forehead and and runs his fingers over his hair and down the back of his head, eyes closed at the ceiling.

Why the hell wouldn’t she leave a fucking _note_?

He slouches down on the couch and lowers his head, his phone hanging from his hand’s loose grip. James lets a shamed sigh drag out of him like a last breath. What’s the use? All a cop’s gonna tell him is that she’s a legal adult and her whereabouts are no longer his concern, not unless he suspects foul play, and that’d just be pushing things exactly where they don’t need to go. He can envision with embarrassing clarity the glare on the officer’s face when Laura turns up safe and sound. She’d never forgive him. Then again, he’s been beyond forgiveness for a long time.

He leans back and and slaps his thighs.

So now what?

 

 

The crisp morning air whispers through her hair and all she hears is the light slapping sound her sandals make as they pad along the observation deck. She crosses her arms as goosebumps form along her pale skin.

James is gonna be pissed for not leaving a note. Or a text. Or something.

Laura asks herself why she even cares. It’s not like he can do anything about it, and she’s safe, isn’t she? She chose this all on her own. And if he doesn’t like it, well, tough.

He fucking ruined her _life_.

He never let her be free for too long. She can’t even count how many sleepovers he’s cut short or flat out denied her, the unreasonable curfews, the constant moving. Oh, and let’s not forget the drinking, the name calling and the beatings that he pretends he doesn’t remember.

Her wavering, watery reflection shines back at her over the railing.

She wishes Mary were here with her.

 

 

After sending about four frantic unanswered texts, James has to go. He reaches into the hamper and sifts around until he finds a pair of crumpled jeans and shimmies them on. He plops down on the bed and shoves his feet into his sneakers. He pulls his old brown army jacket from the closet and heads out.

Children walk to school and cars drive through the streets in the morning rush. It’s 7:14 am. He fears the longer he waits, the farther away Laura will be. She has a friend in Indiana that visits every few months, so for all he knows she could have hitched a ride with him to live in Indiana. That’d be putting a hell of a lot of distance away from someone she can’t stand. His frown deepens. Sure, it sounds drastic, but at the tender age of 8 Laura had already the wit about her to escape from the orphanage and hitch a ride with Eddie to a town she’s never been before in the hopes of finding his wife. Laura said she had faked a bad stomach virus by sticking her finger down her throat. When James asked why, she said, “The hospital wasn’t the orphanage.”

If she can get that desperate to leave a place, who knows what she’ll do now that she’s older, wiser, and more able?

He goes into the garage to see his car gone. If that isn’t Laura making a break for it, he doesn’t know what is.

James copes with these thoughts with motion. The faster his legs go, the more paranoia he can manage. Until he remembers that he doesn’t know where he’s going. So James stops at the corner of an intersection and thinks quick. He can start by going to places that she’d frequent. The mall, the theater, Katie’s house.

But without a car he’s confined only to where his feet can take him. He doesn’t want to have to do this, but James takes out his cell phone and calls his father.

“Hello?” he hears after three rings.

“Dad,” James breathes, “I need your help.”

“James? That you?”

James slaps his thigh. “No, Dad, it’s your _other_ son. Jeff.”

A hoarse laugh like a chimney being aired out is what he hears, almost as if he’s breathed in dust and is trying to cough it out, but he’s having such a kick out of doing so.

“Dad,” he presses.

“Sorry, sorry. What’s the matter, son?” his voice is gravelly yet soft. James is reminded how that can both comfort and annoy him. On one hand, his father’s always been a mild person, disinclined toward any set of convictions and untethered by even the harshest of opinions, but on the other hand, he’s too damn mellow for his own good and he won’t take a stand even for something he really believes in, choosing rather to keep the peace. James doesn’t want any of those qualities rearing their heads now, but considering James’ past behavior, Frank just might take Laura’s side in this and let her remain lost until she decides to come back. He almost always takes Laura’s side.

“Dad, I need you to listen to me. Laura’s taken the car and she’s gone off somewhere. I need you to pick me up so we can look around. I’m about two minutes from tearing out my own hair.”

“Oh, uh,” Frank dawdles, already so unsure. James could have expected this. “Are you sure she just didn’t take the car for a drive?”

To keep from exploding in a public space, James takes in a breath and keeps his voice level. “Laura is 17 and a pain in my ass. If she took the car just for a joyride, she’d have said as much. Are you aware she’s supposed to be at school right now? The high school is a 10 minute walk from our house. Why would she take my car? Think.”

He waits for Frank to get the message. It takes his father a moment, but lightening flashes in his voice and he exclaims, “Don’t tell me, she took off to skip school!”

James closes his eyes and swallows, taking in calming breaths through his nose. “Something like that, Dad. Something like that.”

 

 

James has his arms crossed over his chest, making masticating movements with his jaw. He wants to scream and pummel the dashboard and announce blaringly for his father and anyone in the immediate vicinity to hear that Laura is a cunt bitch who’s about to get a red hand mark on her skinny pale ass, but that’s perhaps too abrasive a response for Frank’s heart condition.

“Maybe she’s just having some trouble over there. You know, new house, new school, all these things you gotta get used to again,” Frank offers.

His son shuffles in his seat, exhaling an impatient breath and resting his arm on the window ledge. “’S not that, Dad.” he responds.

Frank looks sideways at James. “Don’t yell at her, son,” he says, “Being a teenager, especially a girl, ain’t easy. Especially with someone like you. Life’s hard for everybody one way or the other.”

James wants to turn to him with a scowl, but instead stares a bit slack jawed at him. Frank knows next to nothing about how things are at home between Laura and James, and if he knew, he wouldn’t be driving James anywhere. But Frank isn’t completely stupid. At the very least he knows James isn’t exactly a ray of sunshine, but he’s also acknowledged that Laura can be difficult. Sometimes James forgets how understanding he can be. Perhaps his mildness isn’t a weakness but a learned strength.

James slumps back into his seat and rests his chin in his hand, turning to the window.

 

 

Laura’s been missing for four days and four nights. James calls the police, and a search party is formed. Neighbors and police dogs help James and Frank scour the streets, the woods and even some farmland way out in the boonies. Somehow James spends more time placating the worries and deepest fears of his neighbors than anyone spends placating his. It never once hits James that Laura could really be dead. He refuses the possibility out of anger and maybe sheer foolishness. He’d only called the police because Frank wouldn’t allow her to be missing for a whole day and not fracture a hip bone over it. Despite not wanting to, James thought he’d speed things up by telling a lie. He said Laura didn’t know how to drive, so someone must have taken her.

But he knows she can’t be dead. She took his car and there’s be a million places she could be, anywhere she’d escape. A teen girl can be very resourceful when need be.

And then it hits him.

James sits up in bed after an exhaustive day of searching. The cops have been calling him on and off, telling him she’s in one place, but they’ll search another. Essentially, useless information. The prolonging of dumb hope. But none of that matters now.

He knows where she is.

James throws the covers off and shuffles his clothes on, not even bothering with socks or his watch because every moment he waits is one more second wasted. He tiptoes through the living room, buttoning his jacket and slicking his hair back, eying the keys on the kitchen counter. He snatches them, stifling the clinking with clenched fists. He delicately opens the shelves underneath the countertop. Spoons and forks in one. Ladles, measuring cups, knives and turkey basters in another. He tries the last one, and sees a shelf filled with old take-out menus for various Italian and Chinese restaurants, some coupons, an old pair of scissors, and an open packet of screws. After some shuffling around and a look over his shoulder to make sure he hasn’t woken his father, he finds the pocket flashlight. His bigger one broke after a botched attempt to fix a leaky pipe in the basement. He ended up having to call someone else to take a look at it. He remembers running up the steps and closing the door, his body pressed against it and panting hard. Laura’s voice startled him. He jumped and asked what she wanted. She asked if he fixed it, and he shook his head, feeling the sweat on his temples. “It was dark. Too dark,” he rasped. Laura didn’t need another reason to believe James was pathetic, but she got one anyway. It’s so easy to get caught up in the past. Just for tonight, he can’t afford to do that.

James takes one last glance at Frank sleeping on the couch. He’d insisted James needed emotional support and couldn’t be left alone. As much as he hates to admit it, it’s true. James couldn’t very well get smashed and crash his car into a ditch when his father’s here for the sole purpose of helping him through this. It’d be a death in bad taste. And anyway, he can push something like that to another day, because he’s going back.

Back to where it all began.

 

 

Hands on the steering wheel, James peers out at the road. The yellow line goes on for what seems like forever. He remembers, years ago, when he drove all night just to get his mind off of things. Mary lay in her sickbed, tossing and turning, and James was gradually numbing away to nothing, resolving never to feel so long as he could outrun it. It worked well for a while.

 He feels his heart begin to thump and his blood quickens as he passes the sign that says he just left Brahms and the next right will take him straight through to Silent Hill.

It’s no secret he hasn’t been here in more than a decade. Not since that hellish year, 1994. He still remembers it like he only escaped a few days ago. Eddie, Angela, those monsters… and that Red Pyramid Thing. It all seems like a long, bizarre dream, a maze of decrepit buildings, filled with fear, sweat, and desolation. The radio’s spurt of static made his heart thrash around like a bird in a cage. He remembers figures approaching, making noises like no animal he’d ever heard of.

Funny, he still had half a mind to turn himself in after Silent Hill. Maybe prison wouldn’t be so bad after what he’d been through. Laura could go to a better home. Only if she didn’t want to stay. James could beat himself over the head with it. She wanted to _stay_ with him. And look how he’s repaid her.

James’ fingers drum on the rimmed steering wheel. He’s mentally preparing himself, albeit doing a shitty job of it. He knows he’s close.

Who could mistake that sudden shroud of fog?

His car grounds to a halt and the asphalt crunches one last time under the wheel. He turns off the engine. He knows cars aren’t very welcome. It seems a funny thing to think, but the town prefers you on foot. He’ll oblige this old friend one last time. He steadily approaches, taking note of every sound, feeling the glaring absence of any means of defense, just as it had been the first time. He steps out, not bothering to close the door of the car and running up to the gaping maw. The edges of jagged pavement drop off into nowhere. Years ago, this is what kept him from leaving. Now this is what’s keeping him from entering. The world ends here. James shakes his head at it.

It won’t let him through.

_How?_ His heart thumps in his chest. It can’t be. He was trapped here before, and now it won’t let him in.

 

 

Two hours pass.

James had parked the car on the shoulder near the tree line. In that time he’d fallen asleep. He tries to rub the sleep from his eyes. He would turn on the radio to fill the surrounding area with some noise but he knows that he’ll only get static. Unsurprisingly, cell phone reception is non-existent as well. The small red words OUT OF RANGE stare back at him and he’s tempted to smile just for the sake of finding humor in a fucked up situation, but thinking of Laura out there by herself at the mercy of whatever nightmare that place conjured up for her kills any mirth he could try to summon. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out there’s no way into town. A steady stream of fog has been keeping him from further exploring, not that there’s anything to see anyway. He hears the hoots of owls, the ruffling of the underbrush, the leaves shaking in the breeze. He has nothing here but a knot in his stomach and his own uselessness to keep him company. He hopes, he prays, as he often does, but always expects the worst. That is, after all, what life has taught him to do. You end up less disappointed that way.

Except he wants to hope for something better than a shitty outcome because this is Laura. His inability to help her in a time of need, a dire situation with too many ways of going wrong, finally shows him that all the fights they’ve had don’t mean shit. All the yelling and the screaming and the hitting, the bar hopping, coming home drunk and slapping Laura to the ground when she tried to wrestle the bottle from him… These things, once so abrasive and acidic to recall, flow through him like water. He loves her, despite all he’s done. All the names he called her. All the things she did to him in spiteful return. He knows what’s important to him now.

He closes his eyes and wonders if she’ll ever return.

 

 

James is startled by the rapping against his window, his heart nearly leaping into his throat. He looks around frantically, gripping the edges of the felt seat with tense hands. He turns his attention toward the driver’s seat window, and a dirty figure is pressed against it. He blinks his vision clear and his breath hitches.

Laura. He swings open the door and she crashes into him and he latches on like a lifeline. She smells like a sewer. She’s damp and trembling, sobbing into his shoulder and clutching at his clothes like he’s the last man on Earth. He can’t take the rush he’s feeling, everything all at once. She’s holding him like she understands.

She understands everything and it fills James with despair.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and he can’t even look at her. There’s so much to say and yet it wouldn’t mean anything at all.

 

 

Her eyes are somewhere else, quiet and despondent. Frank is just coming down from a swell of emotion. He squeezes her hand, seemingly unoffended by her smell and appearance. She’s too unfocused for tasks like showering or eating, but she gulped down water like a camel and spent a lot of time just breathing, staring at nothing. Technically the cops are still looking for her, but James is so physically and emotionally exhausted the thought of adding any factors makes his bones ache. He doesn’t think it wise to ask her what she’s seen, so he stays quiet.

 

 

 It’s been a few days. Frank takes care of Laura while James is at work, but he’s pretty much just a shadow on the wall after that. She’s been eating here and there, so he can’t ask for much more. She’s as quiet as a mouse, taking everything without complaint. She doesn’t say too much nowadays. Perhaps worst of all, she’s adopted James’ habits. She needs a light on, however small, before she can sleep. She prefers the light of the TV, as he does. She doesn’t like loud noises, and she won’t go anywhere near the basement.

James hasn’t touched the liquor since; he didn’t think it fit to, though it’s hard sometimes to resist the inclination. He tried keeping it in plain view to resurrect Laura’s tendency to dump it, but it didn’t work and only made him throw longing glances toward the kitchen. He ended up dumping it himself and smashing the bottles so he wouldn’t fill them with anything else. He got rid of the vanilla extract and the wine and truffle oil, even. He finds himself wanting her to be proud of him, but nothing matters to her either way. His heart tightens at it all the time.

Frank leaves her for a moment to go to the bathroom. James joins her on the couch to watch some TV, though they never pay that much attention. Their minds is always somewhere else.

“Why…” she starts, and he’s startled by the sound of her voice. It is soft and light, though weary from underuse. “Why didn’t it take you too?”

James decreases the space between them. He turns on his fatherly concern and hopes Laura will snap out of the fog she’s in and scold him for his closeness or something, like the normal, snarky Laura would do, but it doesn’t happen. She licks her lip once to help her voice, swallowing. “Why didn’t… you get trapped there too? You did before, didn’t you?”

James smiles plaintively at her. “Double jeopardy?” he shrugs. “Who knows.”

Laura meets his eyes then, watering. Her mouth is twitching and she has a lump in her throat. “Why didn’t you tell me,” she cracks. The dam breaks and her arms quiver, her face reddening. Laura’s always been a quiet crier, and he knows why.

She never wanted to give him the satisfaction.

James straightens and doesn’t know where to put his eyes. He no longer feels worthy of her. He rubs his hands on his jeans in helplessness. Finally, all coming out in a stumble, he says, “If you want, you can leave. I—I won’t bother you anymore. You could live with Dad. He’ll be nice to you. He doesn’t drink, either.” Laura’s sobbing has become audible and he squints his eyes closed. “Laura, you know I’m an idiot. A lowlife, a perverted…fucking idiot. You don’t need me. I’m just an old, bitter asshole with no life left to live. And I made it a point to ruin yours just because… I could.”

“Everything’s changed. Nothing’s the same anymore, and it will never be,” she cries. She presses a hand to her chest. “I saw things, James. Those things… I can’t…”

“I—I’m sorry…”

“Why didn’t you tell me!” she stands, looming over him so for the first time since that hell of a town, he’s made to feel small, helpless. “You were holding that in all those years and you didn’t tell me. You drank and you hit me and you screamed at me, but you never once—” Laura is overcome again, collapsing on the couch. Her hands are upturned and her mouth utters words she can’t bring voice to.

James bridges the gap between them and envelops her. He’s readied himself for any reception, positive or negative. Instead of the slap or the shove he’s anticipating, Laura brings him closer, muffling her voice in his chest. His hand buries itself in her hair and he presses his cheek to her head.

“I know you’d never believe me, Laura, but I love you. I do.”

She sniffs, and pulls away, her teary eyes looking up at him, pleading and open. “You have to… promise me something.”

“Whatever you want, sweetie.”

She closes her eyes and a tear streaks down her cheek. “I don’t want to fight anymore.”

“Okay, okay.” He says softly. “No more of this…push comes to shove. I don’t want to fight anymore either.”

She tries to smile, a little lopsided, and it doesn’t reach her eyes.

He palms her cheek, “I promise.”

“It isn’t true, you know. That we can’t start over. We’re… equals now.”

 

 

Laura finishes high school. James goes to the AA meetings. Things reach a tentative equilibrium.

The road is open ahead of them. Her blond hair wavers in the breeze while the trees pass and pass. In the air is the smell of earth and pine. It’s nearing the end of June and the heat is searing. There’s supposed to be a lake around here somewhere, but being a little lost doesn’t seem to bother them. Being in motion, after all the stillness and the silence, the stifled nights and the terrible dreams, is a small blessing. The feeling of being able to go anywhere and be anyone hits her then. Laura smiles to herself.

“Your life isn’t over yet, old man,” she tells him. He likes to say the opposite every so often but she knows neither of them really believe it. James obliges her with a lazy smirk.

“Whenever you’re done with this place, we can go… if you want.” James says.

“You mean the lake?”

“I mean that town. Brahms.”

Laura thinks for a time. They’ve come to the point that moments of silence between them are no longer uncomfortable. At length, she says, “Can we really go anywhere?”

He nods.

She crosses her legs together on the dash. The sun trails behind them.

“Well… we’re doing good here, I think.”

James turns to her. “You think so?”

“Yeah,” she throws her arms over the seat, closing her eyes to the wind. “I know we are.”


End file.
